


A Good Deed Will Never Go Unpunished

by Dewsparkle



Series: Little Stories of the Avenging Kind [8]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Good Loki, Hurt/Comfort, Loki Needs a Hug, Sadness, Suicide, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 05:35:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11662668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dewsparkle/pseuds/Dewsparkle
Summary: The Avengers are always out dealing with Loki's pranks now that he's back, meanwhile there's talk of an angel haunting the hospitals in New York and a massive sling of recoveries from supposedly terminal illnesses or injuries.





	A Good Deed Will Never Go Unpunished

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting on my laptop for a long time so I thought I'd post it. I'm a bit meh about it, but I hope you like it? Title is a bit meh as well, but I couldn't think of anything else. :P

_It was dark out, clouds obscuring the stars and blocking the moon's cool light on the large grey and white building. A lean figure, clothed in dark colours walked up the path and past some decorative trees, whose auburn leaves gently rustled in the early autumn breeze._

_The tall figure smiled softly, pausing in their journey forward, and breathed in the faint smell the night wind carried. The figure shook themselves out of their silent appreciation and continued towards the building._

Tony Stark huffed as he flopped down onto the obscenely comfy couch in his penthouse, groaning as his weight was removed from his back, letting him relax his tired body. It was late at night and Loki had decided it was the perfect time to raise an army of skeletons all over Queens. Someone had been watching _Jason and the Argonauts_. The damn things had just been scaring the crap out of a bunch of trick or treaters. 

That wasn't the problem. They were solid, but a good whack made the illusions disappear... only to turn into ghosts. Harry Potter style ghosts to be exact, even with the whole having a bucket of ice water dumped on you sensation when they passed through you. 

How else does Tony know they were Harry Potter style? Because there was literally a Nearly-Headless Nick politely talking to a small group of kids who had co-ordinated to each dress up as a different character from the secret club in the fifth book. Yes, Tony had read the books, because what kind of nerd would he be if he hadn’t?

This had been going on for months now, nearly a year. Five months after Thor had told them Loki had been impaled and died in his arms to save Jane Foster, the god had appeared in New York, starting the first of his many pranks. So far, there had been no deaths, and the worst injuries caused was one unfortunate guy who'd broken his leg last Easter when on an egg hunt in Central Park. 

Loki had decided to turn the tables, apparently, and the eggs the people were supposed to find fought back. And by 'fought back', Tony means they sprouted legs and started running at anyone who got too close. The guy had fallen out of a tree trying to get away from the brightly painted eggs.

_The figure strode through the doors of the building, ignoring the medical staff who did not notice him as he passed, slipping through doors without need for a key. The coat the figure wore swirled around his ankles, as he swept through the corridor past the night staff, making his way towards the first ward he came across._

_The figure slipped into the first room and paused in the doorway to survey the patients sleeping inside. Lifting his hands, the figure methodically removed a black leather glove from his hand, revealing pale skin beneath._

_The figure stepped up next to the first bed and flicked his ungloved hand, the patient chart floating over to his awaiting hand. The figure's sharp eyes scanned the papers, quickly discovering this person's ailments before replacing the chart to its position._

_The figure loomed over the sleeping teen who was awaiting a heart transplant. The figure flicked his fingers in a small, seemingly unimportant gesture, causing his pale hand to glow a faint green. The figure gently rested his glowing hand over the girl's chest, just above her heart, featherlight touch barely ghosting her blue hospital scrubs._

_The man stepped away after a few moments and his hand became pale once again. The beeping machine attached to the teen began to beat more steadily. Smiling, the figure moved to the next bed and repeated the process._

_By the time security realised he was in the room, he had finished his task with the people in the ward. The figure calmly replaced his glove and unhurriedly left the ward and left the building, leaving confused humans in his wake._

_Early the next morning, nearly a dozen patients woke to find there was nothing wrong with them any longer. The doctors called it a miracle and had sent them home by that evening to joyful loved ones._

"Sir?" Jarvis piped up, startling Tony from his musings. The thrill that went through him every time he heard his beloved AI's voice again calming any lasting frayed nerves from the 'battle'. It had taken much too long to resurrect Jarvis with what code he could salvage and some help from Vision, but he had done it. He still woke sometimes in a panic, screaming Jarvis' name, after another nightmare where his subconscious brutally tortured him.

"Yeah, buddy? What's up?" Tony asked, opening his eyes in an attempt to stay awake and pay attention. God, when was the last time he'd slept?

"I have been investigating anything suspicious, as you requested, and I have discovered... something rather peculiar if I might say so, Sir." Jarvis sounded hesitant, which caused Tony to frown.

"What'd you find? Is it Loki?"

_The cloaked figure calmly walked down the now familiar corridors of the hospital. It was rather empty, now that most of its patients had miraculously recovered from their various ills. The nurses whispered around him as he walked by, talking of an angel healing those in the facilities care._

_There was one final place that the figure had not yet visited. By now set in an efficient routine, the figure removed his glove with practised movements as he stepped through a brightly coloured door with a sign hanging above it, clinically reading 'Paediatrics'._

Seven hospitals in New York had taken the notice of his AI. Somehow, it was only hitting the news now that hospitals were emptying when their patients lost their illness' and injuries overnight. At least a dozen at a time. Then, once Jarvis knew what to look for, almost all of the hospitals in New York had been visited and their patients healed completely.

Tony was kicking himself. How could they have missed this? The healings- for that's what they seemed to be, would happen over the course of a week, maybe a fortnight if the hospital was large. Each night, a ward would be targeted and the next day when the doctors checked in on their patients, they found it was as if there had never been anything wrong with them in the first place.

There was no pattern to which ward was hit first. The only thing that was consistent was the actual healing and a tall, dark figure caught on security cameras. The guy would waltz right past everyone and no-one would bat an eye. It was as if they couldn't see him, which was completely a possibility with Tony's life as it was.

_Wide eyes stared at the figure as he stepped back from a small boy, whose light brown hair was growing back on his mostly bald head, and watched as his sickly pallor was quickly replaced by a healthy complexion as the figure gazed at the child._

_The figure turned and froze at the sight of the girl sitting up slightly in her bed and staring at him, slightly fearful. The girl was a mess. Her shaved head covered in a bandage where her skull had cracked, left arm in a cast and the other stitched and bandaged in multiple places._

_The figure slowly approached the girl, hands raised to try and appear non-threatening. He stopped at the foot of her bed and gazed mournfully at the flat sheets before him, where a long lump should be but was lacking, indicating the recent loss of both her legs._

_"Mister?" A small voice croaked, laced with pain and misery as she breathed heavily through the breathing tube resting under her dry and reddened nose. "Are you gonna hurt me?"_

_The figure shook his head and carefully walked around the side of the bed and settled beside the girl on his knees. And softly, for the first time, the figure spoke;_

_"No, kjærlighe, I am here to heal you, if you would allow it."_

_The next morning, the girl jumped out of bed and ran to greet her parents at the door._

"Holy shit."

Tony knew that voice. He  _knew_  that voice! He heard it every other week almost! All this time and _this_ is what the trickster had been up to?!

“Son of a bitch.” He said elegantly, running a hand through his messy hair. Suddenly, Tony began to giggle. Loki was healing people in droves all over New York, meanwhile playing harmless pranks to distract from it! The sheer absurdity of the situation made slightly more hysterical giggles bubble up the inventor’s throat.

“Sir?”

“I’m fine, Jarvis. Okay, I’m going to shower and then we’re going to the hospital currently in progress.”

Unfortunately, despite waiting there for a few hours, Tony saw nothing.

_The figure gazed down at the prone man. The man himself was rather usual, perhaps in his early thirties, nothing extraordinary about him, really. He glanced over to the bedside table and gently lifted the small picture frame from it and examined its contents._

_There was the man that lay before him pressing a kiss to another’s cheek while they held a little boy aloft in their arms, an adoption certificate held proudly by the other man as he grinned at the camera._

_Carefully, he set down the photo and looked at the man’s chart just to be sure. He belatedly realised the time he had been admitted into the hospital was a few hours after the time labelled on the adoption paper._

_The man had been shot several times, in what the figure could only assume to be a hate crime considering how close the two events were. The man laying prone on the stark hospital sheets had only recently gotten out of surgery to extract four bullets and stabilise a collapsed and punctured lung._

_The figure pulled off his glove, as he had done many times before, and began his work._

Tony informs the team about what he’s discovered, but until they can find Loki, they decide its best to act like they don’t know what’s going on. It’s a month later when all the hospitals have been hit that they finally find him.

It was rather late, and they were watching a movie when Jarvis suddenly pauses the film. “Sir, I have detected Loki on the tower roof.”

Three minutes later, Tony, Bruce and Natasha are standing on the roof, geared up just in case. Steve and Clint were on a mission, and Thor was with Jane, and Vision was in Malibu with Rhodey and Pepper, so it was just the three of them.

"I've discovered..." Loki slurred suddenly, not even twitching at their presence, looking at a small white bottle in his hand. "That this bottle contains... something that is poisonous to even the Jotunr." His unfocused gaze drifted over to the assembled group, arm dropping back to his side and the bottle rolling out of his involuntarily lax hand and towards Natasha, who deftly swept it up and read the label as best she could out loud, the name being complex and almost unpronounceable. It sounded like it was one of those drugs they only ever gave you one pill for and should probably never take again for the next fifty years.

Loki nodded seriously at them and slumped further against the wall he was leaning on, pale-faced and sweating. He was visibly shaking as one of his knees buckled, a hand shooting out clumsily against the wall to angle his fall to the ground. 

"Loki, how much did you take?" Bruce asks, growing progressively paler as Natasha shows him the contents of the bottle- of lack thereof. 

Loki shrugs, head lolling away from them then circling back to rest on his other shoulder. "No' sure." He mumbles, blinking slowly. He suddenly narrows his eyes at them, a frown pulling at his lips. "Where's Thor?"

Against his better judgement, Tony steps out of his armour and slowly approaches Loki, resting on his knees next to the god, whose dazed green eyes follow him vaguely, occasionally drifting away before being pulled back.

"Thor's not here right now. But, I can take you to him." He lies. They only just figured out what Loki had actually been doing each time he 'attacked' the populace. And now here the god was, killing himself, and Tony couldn't let him do it.

Loki frowned at him with hazy green eyes and shook his head, mouth curling downwards as he glanced away. “No… better if he stays away.”

“Why? Why is it better?” Tony asks.

“He is shamed by me.” Loki paused, before adding. “I am shamed by me. Trickster, liar, ergi, monster.” He rambled, head lolling in a circle again, gaze resting on Natasha and Bruce. “You would know of what I speak, would you not? A liar and a monster.”

“What about me? What am I?”

Loki actually seemed to think about that, and was about to speak when he suddenly began to cough up blood, barely managing to angle himself away in time to avoid soiling the billionaire with the red fluid.

Tony quickly steadied the god and looked helplessly over his shoulder at Bruce, mouthing a plead for Bruce to do something. Tony felt his face drain of blood when the doctor only shook his head.

“There’s no cure for this Tony, it’s an experimental drug that’s relatively new. Just one pill would be toxic, but Loki’s taken the entire bottle. There’s nothing we can do, I’m sorry. If we had more time, maybe, but…” Natasha lays a comforting hand on Bruce’s shoulder and leads him away, leaving Tony with a dying Loki. Apparently, Natasha has deemed it safe.

“You need not worry yourself, Man of Iron. I should have died a long time ago.” Loki attempts to mollify; his coughing having stopped for now.

“No, no, Loki, don’t say that.” Tony denies, sitting down and leaning the limp god against him, a comforting a supporting arm wrapped around his shoulders.

Loki shakes his head clumsily. “I was left to die as a babe. If not then, I should have died when I fell from the Bifrost.”

They talk, sitting like that for a long time. Tony tries to fight down his feelings of guilt and helplessness as he feels Loki growing weaker in his hold, responses having larger and larger gaps between them, words more slurred than before. 

Loki gazes at the rising sun for a long while, his breath slow and quiet. He glances up at Tony, who has tears in his eyes because he knows its soon.

“Thank you.” Is all Loki says, before turning his eyes back to the rays of light rising in the distance.

There’s a moment of silence and Tony knows even without feeling it, that he’s finally gone, and he lets the tears fall.


End file.
